law_quotes.txt

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
People are more afraid of the laws of Man than of God, because their punishment seems to be nearest.
There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity -- the law of nature and of nations.
Law is not law, if it violates the principles of eternal justice.
The law is the public conscience.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
One with the law is a majority.
No organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions.
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
The precepts of the law may be comprehended under these three points: to live honestly, to hurt no man willfully, and to render every man his due carefully.
Without law men are beasts.
Law is order, and good law is good order.
No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural.
Law without justice is a wound without a cure.
Law is an imperfect profession in which success can rarely be achieved without some sacrifice of principle. Thus all practicing lawyers -- and most others in the profession -- will necessarily be imperfect, especially in the eyes of young idealists. There is no perfect justice, just as there is no absolute in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it.
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it.
A law is valuable, not because it is a law, but because there is right in it.
An unjust law is itself a species of violence.
The plaintiff and defendant in an action at law are two men ducking their heads in a bucket, and daring each other to remain longest under water.
Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
It's a strange thing, we think that law brings order. Law doesn't. How do we know that law does not bring order? Look around us. We live under the rule of law. Notice how much order we have?
Law is the rudder of the ship of state.
So diverse and adverse are the decisions of different high courts, and of the same high court, that in examining cases, as precedents by which to try a suit, the lawyer encounters a perpetual change of cloud and sunshine, and occasionally a real thunder storm, succeeded by a burning sun. What was law at one time, is not law now--what is law in one place, is not in another--locality, individuality, prejudice, and perpetual change, characterize the decisions of judges learned in the law.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
It is wrong to consider that courts are established for the benefit of the people. Those who want to perpetuate their power do so through the courts. If people were to settle their own quarrels, a third party would not be able to exercise any authority over them. Truly, men were less unmanly when they settled their disputes either by fighting or by asking their relatives to decide for them. They became more unmanly and cowardly when they resorted to the courts of law. It was certainly a sign of savagery when they settled their disputes by fighting. Is it any less so, if I ask a third party to decide between you and me? Surely, the decision of a third party is not always right. The parties alone know who is right. We, in our simplicity and ignorance, imagine that a stranger, by taking our money, gives us justice.
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
Although I broke a lot of laws as a teenager, I straightened out immediately upon turning eighteen, when I realized the state had a legal right to execute me.
I don't go by what the law say. The law's liable to say anything. I go by if it's right or not. It doesn't matter what the law say. I take and look at it for myself.
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom.
The final test of civilization of a people is the respect they have for law.
When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.
Law is a bottomless pit.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Who to himself is law, no law doth need. Offends no law, and is a king indeed.
Courts are places where the ending is written first and all that precedes is simply vaudeville.
Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.
Every new time will give its law.
Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.
In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.
Laws ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people whom they are meant to benefit, and not imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right.
Where there are laws, innocence need not tremble.
Of all injustice that is the greatest which goes under the name of law.
Laws and institutions are constantly tending to gravitate. Like clocks, they must be occasionally cleansed, and wound up, and set to true time.
Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.
No one will ever comprehend the arrested civilizations unless he sees the strict dilemma of early society. Either men had no law at all, and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging together, or they had to obtain a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. Those who surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those that lay in their way who did not.
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
The Law ... is perfection of reason.
Laws or ordinances unobserved, or partially attended to, had better never have been made.
Law ... is the clear, translucent stream of justice, flowing freely and smoothly between the banks of wisdom and truth, purified by mercy and equity. As found upon our statue books, this highway of justice, like some of our rivers, is interrupted in its free course, by individual dams, sand bars, snags, and flood wood; often changing the channel, and causing many a shipwreck.
Societies start moving menacingly on the lines of Whataboutery when law is not applied equally and justly to all.
We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.
The Law is hard, but it is the Law.
Reason is the life of the law, nay the common law is nothing else but reason.
No man is above the law, and no man is below it.
For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could long defy the commands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors.
[The Utopians] have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest the laws, and, therefore, they think it is much better that every man should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in other places the client trusts it to a counsellor; by this means they both cut off many delays and find out truth more certainly; for after the parties have laid open the merits of the cause, without those artifices which lawyers are apt to suggest, the judge examines the whole matter, and supports the simplicity of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty men would be sure to run down; and thus they avoid those evils which appear very remarkably among all those nations that labour under a vast load of laws.
A man with a club is a law-maker.
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we do to each other.
Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.
Laws are made by the old, exceptions by the young.
The law no passion can disturb. 'Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger. 'Tis mens sine affectu, written reason, retaining some measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but, without any regard to persons, commands that which is good and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low.
Necessity has no law.
Our legislature has continued to take the ridiculous approach of using a fire axe to open an unlocked door as opposed to merely using a more nuanced and slight adjustment to correct a perceived flaw in the current law.
The judge is nothing but the law speaking.
Bad laws are not forever and if we work together, we can change them.
Laws are only as good as those that enforce them.
Laws change as the seasons.
One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them.
If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.
Use law and physic only for necessity; they that use them otherwise abuse themselves unto weak bodies, and light purses; they are good remedies, bad businesses, and worse recreations.
Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.
It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge.
Men seldom understand any laws but those they feel.
Laws are not masters but servants, and he rules them who obeys them.
Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.
Law intends indeed to do service to human life, but it is not able when men do not choose to accept her services; for it is only in those who are obedient to her that she displays her special virtue.
If nature does not ratify law, then all the virtues may lose their sway.
Laws are generally not understood by three sorts of persons, namely, by those who make them, by those who execute them, and by those who suffer if they break them.
When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this.
I reverence the law, but not where it is a pretext for wrong, which it should be the very object of law to hinder.... I hold it blasphemy to say that a man ought not to fight against authority: there is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it.
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
The rule of law is a jewel of great value. It is the means by which we do public and private justice.
There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak.
It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work, it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.
The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.
No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he remains within the sphere of his liberty -- a sphere, by the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants.
Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour.... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?
The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land; unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit.
The doctrine of the law then is this: that precedents and rules must be followed, unless flatly absurd or unjust: for though their reason be not obvious at first view, yet we owe such a deference to former times as not to suppose they acted wholly without consideration.
The law is reason unaffected by desire.
Well thought out law is elegant, economical, easy to learn.
There is so much law, touching on so many aspects of our lives, that it would be impossible for us to grasp it all, or to follow it even if we could grasp it. Even as a lawyer I can't keep up with the politicians in their impotent zeal to put a stop to things.
Justice? You get justice in the next world. In this one you have the law.
However the law, to make it a mystery and a trade, may be wrapped up in terms of art, yet it is founded on reason, and obvious to common sense.
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?
Today, the worst laws on top of bad laws are destroying what little freedom we have left. Simple as that. So I'm for one new law: No new laws.
The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order enforced with justice and by strength lie at the foundations of civilization. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law, nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization.
When each citizen submits himself to the authority of law he does not thereby decrease his independence or freedom, but rather increases it. By recognizing that he is a part of a larger body which is banded together for a common purpose, he becomes more than an individual, he rises to a new dignity of citizenship. Instead of finding himself restricted and confined by rendering obedience to public law, he finds himself protected and defended and in the exercise of increased and increasing rights.
But the law is good to edify, if a man use it lawfully: for that the end of it is charity, out of a pure heart and good conscience, and faith unfeigned.
Bad laws are easy to legislate, but tough to implement.
But if the will of the people, the decrees of the senate, the adjudications of magistrates, were sufficient to establish rights, then it might become right to rob, right to commit adultery, right to substitute forged wills, if such conduct were sanctioned by the votes or decrees of the multitude. But if the opinions and suffrages of foolish men had sufficient weight to outbalance the nature of things, then why should they not determine among them, that what is essentially bad and pernicious should henceforth pass for good and beneficial? Or why, since law can make right out of injustice, should it not also be able to change evil into good?
There are times, too, when the law doesn't give a damn who gets caught beneath its wheels.
All of our punishment institutions, including jails, laws, church confessionals, and so forth, are systems of illusion. The order of the universe, the infinite justice of yin and yang, naturally takes care of all motion and compensation. We don't need to invent arbitrary ways to make balance with punishments.
In all governments, there must of necessity be both the law and the sword; laws without arms would give us not liberty, but licentiousness; and arms without laws, would produce not subjection, but slavery. The law, therefore, should be unto the sword what the handle is to the hatchet; it should direct the stroke and temper the force.
Law has been called a bottomless pit, not so much because of its depth, as that its windings are so obscure nobody can see the end.
Laws are not made like lime-twigs or nets, to catch everything that toucheth them; but rather like sea-marks, to guide from shipwreck the ignorant passenger.
Laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.
There is one law for rich and poor alike, which prevents them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges.
This is how bad laws are made: You compile a bunch populist sections, then cleverly hide in them some draconian ones, which ultimately become the central laws.
When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.
For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.
A nation that will not enforce its laws has no claim to the respect and allegiance of its people.
LAW--rigid, definite, concise law--is the primary want of early mankind; that which they need above anything else, that which is requisite before they can gain anything else. But it is their greatest difficulty, as well as their first requisite; the thing most out of their reach, as well as that most beneficial to them if they reach it. In later ages many races have gained much of this discipline quickly, though painfully; a loose set of scattered clans has been often and often forced to substantial settlement by a rigid conqueror; the Romans did half the work for above half Europe. But where could the first ages find Romans or a conqueror? Men conquer by the power of government, and it was exactly government which then was not. The first ascent of civilization was at a steep gradient, though when now we look down upon it, it seems almost nothing.
There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.
Accursed be the city where the laws would stifle nature's!
We are talking about obedience to law--law, this marvelous invention of modern times, which we attribute to Western civilization, and which we talk about proudly. The rule of law, oh, how wonderful, all these courses in Western civilization all over the land. Remember those bad old days when people were exploited by feudalism? Everything was terrible in the Middle Ages--but now we have Western civilization, the rule of law. The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed before the rule of law, that is what the rule of law has done. Let us start looking at the rule of law realistically, not with the metaphysical complacency with which we always examined it before.
The law should be the point at which savagery ended because civilization stood in its path.
Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature -- were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.
The law is like Swiss cheese. The holes are the truth, and lawyers are like roaches crawling through the cheese. You can use the holes to get from one part of the cheese to another, but you can't eat the holes, you can only eat the cheese.
For he that is delighted by concord, And who abideth in the Law, Falleth not from Security.
Written laws are formulas in which we endeavor to express as concisely as possible that which, under such or such determined circumstances, natural justice demands.
I call that law universal, which is conformable merely to dictates of nature; for there does exist naturally an universal sense of right and wrong, which, in a certain degree, all intuitively divine, even should no intercourse with each other, nor any compact have existed.
Law: an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.
We are either a nation of laws or we aren't.
For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.
From real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters.
In my opinion, the law is not abstract, nor is the U.S. Constitution inherently good. The Constitution condoned 89 years of slavery in the U.S., and common law condoned 156 years of slavery before that. If history demonstrates anything, it is that the law is not the arbiter of morality but a parody of it. Legal justification should be regarded as the lowest rationale for a society's state of affairs, and yet the law is always our first form of recourse in adjudicating differences in public policy.
Engaging with the law is fine in the short term, but true liberation from oppression will not come from the law. As history bears out, true liberation has always and will always come about in spite of the law, not with it.
Justice is immortal, eternal, and immutable, like God himself; and the development of law is only then a progress when it is directed towards those principles which, like him, are eternal; and whenever prejudice or error succeeds in establishing in customary law any doctrine contrary to eternal justice, it is one of the noblest duties, gentlemen ... to show that an unjust custom is a corrupt practice, an abuse; and by showing this, to originate that change, or rather development in the unwritten, customary law, which is necessary to make it protect justice, instead of opposing and violating it.
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law's treatment.
Law hath dominion over all things, over universal mind and matter; For there are reciprocities of rights, which no creature can gainsay.
Notwithstanding, for the more public part of government, which is laws, I think good to note only one deficiency; which is, that all those which have written of laws have written either as philosophers or as lawyers, and none as statesmen.
I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny.
Laws are dangerous to everyone, innocent and guilty alike, because they have no human understanding in and of themselves. They must be interpreted.
The trend towards throwing new laws at everything continues apace.
When it comes to true lies and misdemeanors, the law now depends on who you are, not what you do.
The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed--and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves.
It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.
The law itself is accused of iniquity, and impeached, like the orators of Athens when they have persuaded the assembly to pass unjust decrees.
Anytime you live in a society supposedly based upon law and it doesn't enforce its own laws because the color of a man's skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice when the government can't give them justice.
The law is a battery, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.
The people's awe and innate fear will hold injustice back by day, by night, so long as the people leave the laws intact, just as they are: muddy the cleanest spring, and all you'll have to drink is muddy water.
The centripetal absorption in the home-made mysteries and sleight-of-hand of the law would be a perfectly harmless occupation if it did not consume so much time and energy that might better be spent otherwise. And if it did not, incidentally, consume so much space in the law libraries. It seems never to have occurred to most of the studious gents who diddle around in the law reviews with the intricacies of contributory negligence, consideration, or covenants running with the land that neither life nor law can be confined within the forty-four corners of some cozy concept. It seems never to have occurred to them that they might be diddling while Rome burned.
In written laws, men ... make a difference between the letter and the sentence of the law: And when by the letter is meant whatsoever can be gathered from the bare words, 'tis well distinguished. For the significance of almost all words, are either themselves, or in the metaphorical use of them, ambiguous, and may be drawn in argument to make many senses, but there is only one sense of the law.
The law is more easily understood by few than many words. For all words are subject to ambiguity, and therefore multiplication of words in the body of the law is multiplication of ambiguity. Besides, it seems to imply (by too much diligence) that whosoever can evade the words is without the compass of the law.
We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.
Now, it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges; and for this several reasons. First, to find one man, or a few men, who are sensible persons and capable of legislating and administering justice is easier than to find a large number. Next, laws are made after long consideration, whereas decisions in the courts are given at short notice, which makes it hard for those who try the case to satisfy the claims of justice and expediency.
When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.
Laws, however divine in origin and institution, would be found of little coercion among men, were the administration of them not committed to mortals.
The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself.
The universal and absolute law is that natural justice which cannot be written down, but which appeals to the hearts of all.
There is no intrinsic virtue to law and order unless "law" is equated with justice and "order" with the discipline of a people satisfied that justice has been done.
Laws like to Cobwebs catch small Flies, Great ones break thro' before your eyes.
The law is a pretty bird, and has charming wings; it would be quite a bird of paradise if it did not carry such a terrible bill.
He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead.
Laws are but words. Spoken, they may be ineffectual as the air that bears them. Even when written, they are of no effect unless enacted by people who understand them and take them seriously.
If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
The law hath so many contradictions and varyings from itself, that the law may not improperly be called a law-breaker. It is become too changeable a thing to be defined: it is made little less a Mystery than the Gospel. The clergy and the lawyers, like the Freemasons, may be supposed to take an oath not to tell the secret.
Of course you got rights, the law's on your side, but sometimes the law takes a long time to kick in and so it gets put in the hands of us poor suckers on duty. You get my drift?
Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle size are alone entangled in.
The problem with law is that it is blind. It is quite similar to the plight of a young blindfolded child trying to hit a piñata -- there are always chances of collateral damage. The blindfolded statue of Justice which is supposed to portray Her objectivity and therefore Her greatest strength also becomes Her greatest weakness. She is a victim to interpretative machinations and subjectivity.
If we look to the historical influences which have actually enacted human codes, and which have governed their administration, it is at first difficult to understand the sanctity which is thus attributed to the law and its ministers. And if, further, we examine the contents of human codes, and observe how far short they fall of enforcing, even within the limits that must bound all attempts at such enforcement, anything like an absolute morality, this difficulty is not diminished. Between law and equity there is, perhaps there must always be, a considerable interval. Between law and absolute morality there is at times patent contradiction. The undue protection of class interests, the neglect of interests of large classes; the legislation which consults, chiefly and above all else, the profit of the legislator, whether he be king, or noble, or popular assembly; the legislation which postpones moral to material interests, and which makes havoc of man's highest good in order to gratify his lower instincts, his passing caprice, his unreasoning passion -- all this and much else appears to forbid enthusiasm for human law.
Law is the supreme power in the state, through its legislature, commanding what is right, and condemning what is wrong.
The wisdom of a law-maker consisteth not only in a platform of justice, but in the application thereof; taking into consideration by what means laws may be made certain.